Debbie McGee in Iran

Showbiz star, Debbie McGee describes being caught up in the Iranian revolution in 1978

• 9 mins

The Pakistani teens who became disco superstars

How Nazia and Zoheb Hassan changed South-East Asian pop with their album, Disco Deewane

• 9 mins

Destruction of Mostar Bridge

On 9 November 1993 the historic bridge was destroyed during the Bosnian War

• 9 mins

The hippo and the tortoise

In 2004, a hippo and a tortoise became friends. Their story gained worldwide fame

• 9 mins

The invention of the EpiPen

How engineer Sheldon Kaplan and his team made the EpiPen, the lifesaving allergy device

• 9 mins

Eyjafjallajökull: The volcano that stopped a continent

In 2010, a cloud of volcanic ash brought Europe’s planes back to earth

• 9 mins

Rosalind Franklin: DNA pioneer

The scientist produced an X-ray photograph in 1952, that helped show the structure of DNA

• 9 mins

The Bolivian Water War

How Bolivians in the city of Cochabamba fought against the “leasing of the rain”

• 9 mins

Discovering the ancient city of Thonis-Heracleion

In 2000 Franck Goddio made one of the greatest ever underwater discoveries

• 9 mins

The independence of Zambia

How Zambia became independent in 1964

• 9 mins

The invention of bubble tea

Chun Shui Tang tea house in Taiwan began selling bubble tea in 1987

• 9 mins

Kennedy’s nail-biter election victory

In 1960, John F Kennedy became the youngest person to be elected United States president.

• 9 mins

The Paris heatwave

In 2003, Paris was overwhelmed by the hottest European heatwave for 500 years

• 9 mins

The Mumbai attacks

In 2008, 10 gunmen killed more than 100 people in Mumbai’s busiest hot spots

• 9 mins

Cabbage Patch Kids

Christmas 1983 saw frenzied shoppers buy three million Cabbage Patch Kids

• 9 mins

The bird that defied extinction

In 1977, the white-winged guan was rediscovered in Peru after a century

• 9 mins

Cameroon’s mysterious lake deaths

In 1986, remote parts of Cameroon were turned into ghost villages overnight

• 9 mins

Tanzania adopts Swahili to unite the country

Tanzania's leader, Julius Nyerere, made Swahili the official language in the early 1960s

• 9 mins

World's first solar-heated home

In 1948, the Dover Sun House, in the US, was the first home to be heated by solar power

• 9 mins

La Haine: The film that shocked France

How Mathieu Kassovitz's critique of policing shocked French society

• 9 mins

Thousands of Danish brains in plastic buckets

In 1945, a collection that would amass 9,479 brains was started

• 9 mins

A Greek coup: The day the colonels took power

In 1967, army officers seized power in Greece in a US-backed coup

• 9 mins

‘The disappeared’ of Argentina

In 1977 a woman became one of thousands who disappeared from the streets of Buenos Aires

• 9 mins

The release of DOOM

In 1993, a controversial sci-fi video game called DOOM was released

• 9 mins

Murder of the Romanovs

In 1918, the Russian royal family were killed by the Bolsheviks

• 9 mins

Yeltsin speaks at the reburial of the Romanovs

In 1998, the Russian president condemned the Soviet violence that killed Tsar Nicholas II

• 9 mins

Anna Akhmatova: The poet who defied a regime

How the great poet kept writing even through the darkest days of Soviet history

• 9 mins

Vatican citizen Emanuela Orlandi disappears

In 1983, a suspected kidnapping led to scandal

• 9 mins

The funeral of Nelson Mandela

In 2013, South Africa's first black president was buried in his ancestral village

• 9 mins

Tsunami devastates Samoa

In 2009 a tsunami killed 149 people. Lumepa Hald tells the story of destruction and loss

• 9 mins